Sprint for Internet Connection

[Joey Ketcham]

Apparently Sprint offers wireless connection using a card that goes into your laptop that acts as a WiFi card and uses software to dialup to the internet. Apparently you can use this anywhere US or International, anyone use this service or know anything about it?

http://www1.sprintpcs.com/explore/ueConten...ccessFromSprint

 

[David Drummond]

Originally posted by jketcham
Apparently Sprint offers wireless connection using a card that goes into your laptop that acts as a WiFi card and uses software to dialup to the internet. Apparently you can use this anywhere US or International, anyone use this service or know anything about it?

http://www1.sprintpcs.com/explore/ueConten...ccessFromSprint

Cards work great as long as your in a Sprint area. Don't expect to use it in the western half of KS, and parts of the Texas Panhandle, North TX or Western OK though. While the coverage is getting better every year, there are still a lot of chase places that don't have access.

 

[Robert Dewey]

Jeff Snyder convinced me to go wtih Cingular in another thread, and it's been great. It works pretty darn well with GRLevel3...

I have tested it out around here in MI by driving to the middle of no where, and I still get a signal. I occasionally get a drop, and it can be a pain to try and re-connect though, even when I am in an area that is covered. Just a couple of days ago when I went out to "chase" that rare April snowstorm, I managed to get stuck in the intense band of snow (with 8-12" already on the road), with near whiteout conditions, in the middle of no where. I was able to bring up a few radar images, GPS maps, and I managed to snap a few photos and e-mail them to my parents in real-time. Pretty neat stuff...

Haven't tried Sprint, but the price of my Cingular service is $30/month for the phone, and $24.99 for unlimited internet on the GPRS service.

 

[Joey Ketcham]

Originally posted by rdewey
Jeff Snyder convinced me to go wtih Cingular in another thread, and it's been great. It works pretty darn well with GRLevel3...

I have tested it out around here in MI by driving to the middle of no where, and I still get a signal. I occasionally get a drop, and it can be a pain to try and re-connect though, even when I am in an area that is covered. Just a couple of days ago when I went out to \"chase\" that rare April snowstorm, I managed to get stuck in the intense band of snow (with 8-12\" already on the road), with near whiteout conditions, in the middle of no where. I was able to bring up a few radar images, GPS maps, and I managed to snap a few photos and e-mail them to my parents in real-time. Pretty neat stuff...

Haven't tried Sprint, but the price of my Cingular service is $30/month for the phone, and $24.99 for unlimited internet on the GPRS service.

Sounds pretty sweet, do you just connect your laptop to your cell phone to dial into Cingular or do you use a PCMCIA WiFi card similar to Sprint?

 

[Eric Friedebach]

I think you are confusing the WiFi cards with the PCS Vision cards.

The way Sprint is marketing this is confusing. There are several rate plans available for business customers and consumers. The consumer plan has three tiers of measured rates of data transfer with no unlimited option. The business plan has two measured plans or all-you-can-eat for $80/mo.

http://www.sprint.com/business/products/pr...sVisionPlan.jsp

For some reason nobody at Sprint can explain to me, the consumer flavor disappeared from their website last fall, even though it still available.

I’ve talked to two different business account reps at two different Sprint Stores in the past six weeks. A consumer can sign up for the business all-you-can-eat plan. Instead of entering in a Employer Identification Number, they try to force the system to accept a Social Security Number.

I’ve been using the PCS Vision card for a couple of years now and love it. Well, most of the time. As long as I have a PCS Cellular signal, I have internet at around 70-130K. I tried to figure out a way to hook up an external antenna to my Merlin C-201 card, but gave up after never really being able to identify the socket. I do use a Wilson antenna terminated with a short piece of wire as a passive coupler.

Sprint will be turning on EV-DO systemwide around June, so I’m going to jump and buy an AirCard 580.
http://www.sprint.com/business/products/ph...ectionCards.jsp

More info on EV-DO can be found here:
http://www.evdoinfo.com/

 

[Robert Dewey]

Originally posted by jketcham
Sounds pretty sweet, do you just connect your laptop to your cell phone to dial into Cingular or do you use a PCMCIA WiFi card similar to Sprint?

I just hook it up to my cell phone (it acts as a modem), and then dial into the Cingular GPRS service. This doesn't count as your minutes either...

The only problem that I had was that I purchased a cheap data cable from eBay, a word of caution - Never do that! I ended up going out and buying that DataPilot cable for my phone which worked pretty good, but it took a little bit to configure the modem and stuff. If your interested, you should shoot a P.M. to Jeff Snyder, as he seems to know quite a bit about it.

 

[Joey Ketcham]

Awesome, thanks!

 

[David Drummond]

Originally posted by Eric Friedebach
I think you are confusing the WiFi cards with the PCS Vision cards.

The way Sprint is marketing this is confusing. T

Indeed they are. The vision cards are fine if you can stomach the $80/month and are in Sprint area enough to make it feasable. I wouldn't go for their paid wifi. Too many free APs out there to bother with paid service any more.

I wanted Cingular service orginially when I got Sprint, but my zip code is one outside their "area" even though Cingular works fine here.

Thanks to Ed, I now have a better, vision capable phone and tried connecting with the Futuredial yesterday and it worked just great!

 

[Edward Ballou]

Originally posted by David Drummond+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(David Drummond)</div>

<!--QuoteBegin-Eric Friedebach

I think you are confusing the WiFi cards with the PCS Vision cards.

The way Sprint is marketing this is confusing. T

Indeed they are. The vision cards are fine if you can stomach the $80/month and are in Sprint area enought to make it feasable. I wouldn't go for their paid wifi. Too many free APs out there to bother with paid service any more.

I wanted Cingular service orginially when I got Sprint, but my zip code is one outside their "area" even though Cingular works fine here.

Thanks to Ed, I now have a better, vision capable phone and tried connecting with the Futurdial yesterday and it worked just great![/b]

You're welcome David. If anyone has any questions about Sprint, I've pretty good experience with them.

I'm now running a Treo 650 that will soon be capable of Bluetooth DUN. Sadly I still need to be under Sprint service, but it'll do for now.